The preacher on local access television had announced the end of the world every autumn for thirty years. He was small, cheerful, and relentlessly specific, standing beneath a hand-painted sign while naming a date in October and assuring viewers that whatever arrived would do so under pleasant conditions. People watched for entertainment. Restaurants ran specials. Someone once printed T-shirts reading SEE YOU AFTER ESCHATON when the predicted Tuesday passed uneventfully.
A graduate student digitizing the broadcasts noticed something nobody else had. The dates changed each year, yet every one corresponded with the mildest clear afternoon recorded locally that autumn. Thirty predictions matched thirty unusually fine days: low humidity, little wind, comfortable temperatures, excellent visibility. The weather archive confirmed the pattern closely enough that the student’s advisor checked the calculations twice before asking where the preacher obtained his forecasts.
By then he had retired from broadcasting.
When contacted, he seemed amused by the question. He said people had misunderstood him from the beginning. Eschaton, he explained, concerned unveiling, completion, the removal of whatever prevented one thing from being seen as another. He had never promised explosions, trumpets, graves opening, or cities burning. Those embellishments belonged to viewers.
Asked how weather entered into it, he replied that an unveiling was important enough to deserve decent conditions.
This year’s date had already been chosen.
Since the announcement, meteorologists have become increasingly uncomfortable. Forecast models that usually diverge beyond a week now agree with unusual precision. Next Tuesday will apparently be mild, cloudless, and almost windless across an area hundreds of miles wide. Competing models produce nearly identical temperatures.
Other things have begun aligning as well. Sunrise and sunset times listed by separate services differ by less than a second. Migrating birds have altered course toward the region. Amateur astronomers report several stars appearing fractionally brighter each night, though observatories dismiss the measurements as calibration errors.
The former preacher has reserved a folding chair on a hill outside town. He plans to bring sandwiches and has advised anyone joining him to wear comfortable shoes. When asked what exactly will be unveiled, he smiled and said that knowing beforehand would spoil the purpose.
Tuesday’s forecast remains perfect. What troubles me is Wednesday. Every weather service I check now displays the same blank space where the forecast should be, and none of them appears able to explain why.
©2013 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
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